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IMAGE: Thermal imaging shows how a square of the new textile (dashed lines) traps heat in heating mode (top), while reflecting it in cooling mode (bottom). view more
Credit: Adapted from
2021, DOI: 10.1021/acs.nanolett.1c00400
Clothing, from tank tops to parkas, helps people adapt to temperatures outdoors. But you can only put on or take off so much of it, and fluctuations in weather can render what you are wearing entirely inadequate. In a new study in ACS
Nano Letters, researchers describe a high-tech alternative: a reversible textile they designed to trap warmth in the cold and reflect it during hot weather, all while generating small amounts of electricity.
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IMAGE: This microgripper (2 mm in length) was closed by a printable actuator that formed only in the illuminated area. view more
Credit: Yuichi Hiratsuka from JAIST.
Ishikawa, Japan - Inside our cells, and those of the most well-known lifeforms, exist a variety of complex compounds known as molecular motors. These biological machines are essential for various types of movement in living systems, from the microscopic rearrangement or transport of proteins within a single cell to the macroscopic contraction of muscle tissues. At the crossroads between robotics and nanotechnology, a goal that is highly sought after is finding ways to leverage the action of these tiny molecular motors to perform more sizeable tasks in a controllable manner. However, achieving this goal will certainly be challenging.
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IMAGE: With regular ink, a computer trained with the codebook decodes STOP (top); when a UV light is shown on the paper, the invisible ink is exposed, and the real message. view more
Credit: Adapted from
2021, DOI: 10.1021/acsami.1c01179
Coded messages in invisible ink sound like something only found in espionage books, but in real life, they can have important security purposes. Yet, they can be cracked if their encryption is predictable. Now, researchers reporting in
ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces have printed complexly encoded data with normal ink and a carbon nanoparticle-based invisible ink, requiring both UV light and a computer that has been taught the code to reveal the correct messages.
Researchers at C-Crete Technologies and Rice University have found the right ingredients for cement that does double duty as a structural material and a photocatalytic water purifier with a built-in means of replenishment: simply sand down the material s surface to refresh the photocatalytic quality.